When the film ends, I feel sad. Sometimes I wish I could stay inside the stories in films and books and live there instead. Maggie tells me to go to my room, close the door, and listen to one of my story cassette tapes, but I’m not ready to go from one story to the next yet. She thinks I don’t hear the noises they make, but I do. It always sounds as if he is hurting her, and I don’t like it. I hear Maggie use the bathroom afterwards and then she comes into my room and I hit Play on the tape machine, so that she thinks I was listening to it and not them the whole time. Her hair is sticking out all over the place and her cheeks are red.
“Put some proper clothes on, we’re all going out,” she says, then turns to leave.
“Out?”
“Yes, out. It’s the opposite of in. Hurry up.”
We leave a little while later through the back door. I have never been out the back door before, and when I step through it, I see lots of gray concrete, and fences that are too high to look over. There is a red car too, which I think I have seen before. Maggie pushes the front seat forward so that I can climb in the back, and when I do, it smells like a memory.
I’m not sure how long we drive; I can’t stop staring out the windows. I think I had forgotten that there was more than just the shop and the parade. There are so many roads and houses and people, and the world seems very big all of a sudden. We stop at a pub, which is a place where people go when they are thirsty but don’t want to drink at home. I know this because my real daddy liked to do that a lot.
Inside, Maggie and I sit down at a table, while John gets some drinks: a pint of Guinness for him, a Coke for her, and a lemonade for me. We drink in silence, and Maggie’s face looks strange. I’m not sure what we are doing here, we have fizzy drinks at home. John says maybe we should go, but then two men come over and everyone except me hugs or shakes hands. One of the men rubs me on the head, messing up my hair, which had just been brushed.
“Remember me?” he says, with a smile that doesn’t fit his face.
I do not remember him because we have never met, but he does remind me of someone.
“I’m your uncle Michael, and last time I saw you, you were just a baby girl.”
“She’s still my Baby Girl, aren’t you, Aimee?” Maggie gives me that look that says, Be quiet, without her actually having to say the words.
His hair is orange, just like Rainbow Brite’s, and he has small hands for a man. He is not my uncle, but then Maggie is not really my mum, and John is not really my dad. People here seem to like pretending to be someone they are not. The two men sound like Maggie, not John, and the way they speak reminds me of before, when my home was in Ireland. I think Michael must be Maggie’s brother; they do look a lot alike with the same sort of lips and eyes.
They talk for a long time and I start to feel sleepy. Maggie tells me to stop fidgeting, but I can’t help it. I’m bored, and I would have brought one of my Story Teller magazines if I’d known I would just have to sit still all afternoon.
“I’m telling you, the last three shops they went after all had Irish links. The feckin’ eejits think we’re IRA just because we speak with an accent,” says Maggie.
“Keep your voice down.” John sees me staring. “What you gawping at, Pipsqueak? Why don’t you go play over there.” I look where he is pointing and see three colorful tall machines standing in the corner, all with flashing lights and buttons. John puts his hand in the pocket of his jeans and gives me some coins, but I don’t know what to do with them.
“She’s too little, John. She doesn’t understand.” Maggie sucks through the straw in her empty glass, making a funny noise. She tells me off when I do that.
“Nonsense! She’s bright as a button! Always got her head in a book, this one. Here, let me show you.” John lifts me up. He carries me to the first machine, then drags a chair from an empty table and stands me on top of it, so that I can reach. He lifts my hand in his to push a button, which plays a tune. “This is Pac-Man and I think you’re going to love it.”
“She’s turned into a proper little daddy’s girl,” says the man who says he is my uncle.
Everyone smiles, except Maggie.
Thirty
London, 2017
I shower and put on some clean clothes. I’ve taken a couple of paracetamol and I should be starting to feel better, but I don’t. My agent is going to dump me. He didn’t even reply to the email I sent, his assistant did, and only to say that Tony could squeeze me in an hour from now, giving me almost no time at all to get ready. This latest invasion of reality into the fictitious happy life I had curated for myself was unexpected. I don’t have sufficient defenses left to stop, or even subdue, the attack of anxiety that follows. I’ve only just got the life I thought I wanted; I can’t possibly lose it now.
“Your agent probably just wants to have a chat, like his email says. I think you’re reading far too much into it,” says Jack, as I attempt to apply some makeup.
I don’t normally bother with the whole face-paint routine when I’m not working; I’m not good at that sort of thing. My fingers find the shape of a lipstick inside my bag. I try to steady them enough to put it on, then realize too late that the bright red lipstick isn’t mine. It’s hers. The woman who left it here when I wasn’t. Only my lower lip is red, and for a moment I’m so tired and confused I consider leaving it that way.
“It’s just one stupid article, everyone will have forgotten about it by tomorrow, and I’m sure your agent doesn’t care whether you are having an affair,” Jack adds.
I turn to face him. “But we’re not having an affair.”
“You don’t have to tell me.” He’s sitting on Ben’s side of the bed with his feet up. I don’t know why I feel so guilty when I haven’t done anything wrong.
“I still don’t understand how Jennifer Jones got those pictures.” I apply the color to my upper lip and look at my reflection. For a moment, it’s Alicia’s face that I see. The idea that she is having an affair with my husband, and that the two of them are trying to frame me, still seems ridiculous, but stranger things have happened. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss it. Ben is handsome and charming, witty and fun. At least that’s the version of himself he presents to the rest of the world. Nobody would believe who Ben is behind closed doors. Just the idea of the two of them together feeds the hate that has been growing inside me all these years. Alicia has been a bitch to me ever since school.
“How well do you know Alicia?”
“Not so well.” Jack laughs. “But I don’t think she’s been taking secret pictures of us on her iPhone and selling them to the press, if that’s what you mean.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that.” I think, however, I might have been. I try to think about it logically. “It was a closed set, only a member of the crew could have taken a photo of our sex scene. I suppose there are lots of people who could have taken a photo of us in the bar last night, but the picture in my dressing room?”
“Jennifer Jones was waiting in your dressing room for you on the morning you did the interview.”
“So?”